Related Pages: Easy 4th of July Wreaths, 4th of July Coloring Pages, Printable 4th of July Bookmarks

4th of July Kids Crafts - Finger Puppets

4th of July Finger Puppets Craft Materials List

I’ve placed a photograph next to each finger puppet with the exact materials needed for each. All of them require a very easy to find set of stuff:

Pipe Cleaners

Pom Poms

Googly Eyes

Glue (Hot glue gun works best, but I’ve since discovered that even regular glue will suffice, it just takes longer to dry)

Wire Cutters (So you don’t ruin your scissors cutting the pipe cleaners)

How to Make These 4th of July Puppet Crafts

Please refer to the original Easter finger puppets post for general assembly instructions.

It explains the general instructions on how to wind the pipe cleaners around your finger and how to attach the pom poms accurately.

The Statue of Liberty Finger Puppet

Statue of Liberty Finger Puppet

Wind the puppet body base around your finger.

Make her torch by taking a 2-3 inch piece of glitter green pipe cleaner and winding it around the tip of a sharpened pencil to make a cone shape:

Lady Liberty Torch Assembly

Make Lady Liberty’s crown by forming a green pipe cleaner as shown below. Wrap the end around the rest of the crown to secure the points in place – then clip off the extra on the end.

Lady Liberty Pipe Cleaner Crown

Bend a 6 inch piece of green pipe cleaner into the shape of her arms, and slide it in between the body coils. Bend one up to hold the torch and one curled in front of her.

Glue the torch onto her left hand and then glue the red/orange small pom pom on the top to make it look like a flame. I found a medium sized red glitter pom pom that worked perfectly for this.

Glue the head onto the body.

Glue the green tiny pom pom on the front of the face, then glue the two googly eyes right on top.

American Eagle Finger Puppet

American Eagle Finger Puppet

Wind the puppet body base around your finger.

Bend a full piece of brown pipe cleaner into the shape of wings as shown.

Slide the wings in between the body coils.

Bend a one inch piece of yellow pipe cleaner in half then curve it a little bit into the shape of a beak.

Glue the white pom pom head onto the eagle body.

Glue the beak and googly eyes onto the eagle’s face

Uncle Sam Finger Puppet

(Note that I also added two tiny white pom poms for buttons on his coat!)

Uncle Sam Finger Puppet

Wind the finger puppet base.

Make Uncle Sam’s top hat with a blue and red pipe cleaner – use the instructions from my Cat in the Hat craft:

Pipe Cleaner Top Hat Instructions

Bend a two and a half inch piece of pipe cleaner into the shape of a bow tie as shown.

Glue his pom pom head onto the puppet body.

Glue the medium white pom pom onto the bottom of his face for his beard.

Glue Uncle Sam’s nose and googly eyes in place.

Glue his top hat onto his head, then glue the bow tie and white buttons onto the front of his coat.

Be sure to check out all of the Woo! Jr. 4th of July kids activities while you are here, too!

So, for all the missing mismatched socks we have in this house, I should have a sock puppet museum by now. Seriously. So to keep with our recycled crafts theme of the week for Earth Day, here’s a pretty darn cute animal sock puppet idea.

What You Need to Make this Giraffe Animal Sock Puppet

• An old sock – preferably tan and long-ish, like an adult size dress sock
• One brown pipe cleaner
• Two brown pom poms
• Two googly eyes
• Brown and black paint
• Paint brush
• Glue gun
• Wire clippers

Do all your prep work before you start painting, because you’ll be assembling most of this puppet while it is on your hand, which will make it a little tricky to do other things.

Step One: Cut the pipe cleaner into 4 pieces. 2 pieces are 1″ inch long, 2 pieces are 2″ inches long.

Bend the longer pieces in half to form the ears.

With the glue gun, glue one end of the shorter pieces into the center of the pom poms. These are the giraffe horns.

Step Two: Get your paint and brush ready, and make sure it is slightly watery like tempera or acrylic paint in the containers in the photo above. If you’re using thicker paints, it will be much harder to get it to sink into the sock fibers.

Step Three: Put the sock onto your hand, with your fingers going into the toe of the sock, and your thumb going into the heel like this:

Step Four: Paint spots on the sock. They should be random, mishapen spots like on a real giraffe. For a ‘realistic effect’ (ha!), you can make the spots smaller as they get closer to the head. Then paint two black spots on the nose as shown in the first photo for the nose holes.

Step Five: Use the hot glue gun to glue the googly eyes, pipe cleaner ears, and pom pom horns onto the head. This sounds like it might be tricky, but it isn’t. Just put a drop of the glue the size of a small pea where you want the parts, and stick them on. I glued the ears into the fold of the sock that you can see in the photo above, directly to the left of the paint brush at the back of the puppet mouth.

Step Six: Play with your sock puppet!

Animal Sock Puppet: Giraffe

For you animal lovers, be sure to check out Animal Jr., with tons of animal printables, animal coloring pages, and even a few giraffes hanging around.

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Check out all of our Halloween crafts, or our huge amount of Halloween activities, printables and costumes across all Woo! Jr. Kids Activity sites.